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Brutal Oilers are turning the McDavid era into a hockey travesty

If you’ve only been paying attention to the recent run of headlines, you might be momentarily fooled into believing the Edmonton Oilers are a competent enough NHL team.

Last week, the Oilers momentarily diverted attention from the eternal elephant in the room by protesting a two-game suspension to Connor McDavid for an innocuous, albeit technically illegal, check to the head of Islanders defenceman Nick Leddy. On that front, they probably had a point. And even if they didn’t — even if zero-tolerance head contact is the logical way forward and McDavid had to be the latest poster boy — crying foul against the highly debatable work of the department of player safety is always a good way to unite a fan base in outrage.

And on Monday night, too, the Oilers were celebrating the latest in a line of small of victories. With McDavid serving the second game of his suspension in Nashville, Leon Draisaitl’s two-goal performance against the Predators gave the 23-year-old forward 38 goals. He’s now on pace for Edmonton’s first 50-goal season in more than 30 years. How bad can things be when an Oiler is tracking to do something that hasn’t happened since Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri managed the feat?

Well, still pretty bad — unless you’re talking about the draft-lottery odds, which are actually pretty good. Still, it’s safe to say the Maple Leafs will be catching the Oilers in a relatively chipper mood when they arrive at Scotiabank Arena Wednesday night.

McDavid, fresh off the first bit of supplemental discipline of his four-season career, is expected to be fired up for his annual hometown performance.

“We’re expecting him to be shot out of a cannon,” is how Maple Leafs centreman John Tavares put it.

And the Oilers, who’ve managed at least a point in four straight games, seem to be expecting their recent run of respectability to continue.

“We’re competing like hell. We’ve done it for almost a dozen games now. We’re competing as hard as we can,” Edmonton coach Ken Hitchcock told reporters after the Nashville game.

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Maybe, if you’re one of those people who can be coaxed into believing in the improbable, the Maple Leafs are preparing to face off against a team in the midst of being transformed. Never mind that this season has claimed the job of one coach, Todd McLellan, and the reign of one general manager, Peter Chiarelli. Never mind that when play began Tuesday night the Oilers were still seven points out of the turtle derby for the final Western wild-card spot.

Hitchcock, pulled out of retirement and suddenly cast in the role of the fatherly optimist, is still uttering the P-word — as in, playoffs. And hey, miracles happen. But so does math. Under McLellan this season the Oilers were playing at a dismal .475 points percentage. In 42 games under Hitchcock, they’re at .476. There’s also this: According to the Tuesday afternoon playoff odds at MoneyPuck.com, the Oilers have a better chance of winning the No. 1 pick in the lottery (8 per cent) than they do of making the playoffs (3 per cent). Translation: Nobody’s cheering harder for an Oilers playoff push than Jack Hughes.

Alas, even if the Oilers have become a perpetual punchline, there’s still considerable reverence for McDavid’s gifts. We say “considerable” and not “universal” because although Tavares spent part of Tuesday breaking down the threat posed by No. 97 — “The way he uses (his speed), his ability to read the play, anticipate, is arguably the best in the league,” said Tavares — teammate Auston Matthews brushed aside questions about McDavid with a dismissiveness that was curious.

“You’re playing against stars every night,” Matthews said. “One night you could be against Sidney Crosby, the next night Patrice Bergeron. So, I mean, you’ve got to be ready every single night. There’s good players on every team. There’s superstars on pretty much every team. So you’ve got to be ready against those guys every single night.”

If there’s an idea out there that McDavid is suddenly just another superstar — and hey, after leading the league in points the past two seasons he’s sitting third on the league scoring chart behind Nikita Kucherov and Patrick Kane — it’d be fed by the fact the franchise he plays for is enduring another sub-mediocre season.

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Now that Hitchcock is the guy at the controls, it’s a less than esthetically pleasing one, too. The coach is excited about their recent results, but the Oilers have scored two goals or one in seven of their most recent eight games. With McDavid and Draisaitl leading the way, with the NHL enjoying a goal-scoring renaissance, the Oilers ought to be one of the greatest run-and-gun shows on earth. Instead, they’re playing a give-no-inch grind game. No disrespect to Hitchcock; it’s what he knows. Such stylistic choices are just one of the casualties of chronic front-office incompetence and a stockpile of misfit personnel.

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“It doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t get people to play for each other overnight,” Hitchcock was telling reporters Monday night. “It takes time, and it takes a lot of pushing and pulling. I’ve said this before: Coaches get players to places they can’t get to themselves. And the tug-of-war that goes on until they get to that place is hard. And you’ve got to be able to coach through conflict. And the player’s got to play through contact … And there was some conflict. But we’re here now.”

He said “here” as though the Oilers have finally arrived at some sustainable level of decency. And the folks at the league office can only hope they have. But the math is the math; the climb up the standings is Himalayan. And the mishandling of the McDavid era is slowly turning into a competitive travesty. Nearly four seasons into McDavid’s NHL career, he’s been to the post-season precisely once. Edmonton finished 29th in his rookie year. Last season they ended up 23rd. Heading into Tuesday’s slate of games, they sat in 26th. It’s a situation that’s not doing the NHL any favours, the sport’s paragon of excellence living in perpetual chaos.

Maybe the saving grace is that Major League Baseball’s got an even longer lingering problem. The undisputed top player in the grand old game, Mike Trout, continues to languish in irrelevant Anaheim, where he’s played three career playoff games all told. Trout, though he has long professed his public belief in the Angels’ road map to post-season contention, will be 28 this season. McDavid, still on board with his club’s promises of better days ahead, is only 22. So time, at least, is on hockey’s side. But the cautionary tale is relevant: How long can the best be expected to wait for a franchise that’s decidedly less than that?

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